BBC Broadcaster John Humphrys: Ireland Should Join With The UK Outside The EU

AN SIONNACH FIONN

The British journalist John Humphrys has a reputation for occasionally allowing his right-wing instincts to filter into his broadcasting but never has this been truer than in this fact-free interview with a remarkably patient Helen McEntee, our own Minister of State for European Affairs, when the BBC Today presenter puts forward the claim that there is an argument for Ireland to leave the European Union and “throw in their lot” with the United Kingdom.

A sterling #brexit performance form @HMcEntee as ever, revealing Ireland leaving the EU was somehow seen as a credible solution by Humphrys in his final questions. For the domestic commentators, this is what we’re dealing with…… https://t.co/EOFg0PgQKo

— Neale Richmond (@nealerichmond) January 26, 2019

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Telling Fibs

The great defeat

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via The great defeat

The great defeat

Wee Ginger Dug

After delays, prevarications, and attempts to sideline Parliament, Theresa May finally put her deal to the House of Commons on Tuesday. Theresa May never wanted this vote. She wanted to ram her deal through Parliament without any vote at all. Today we discovered just why she was so reluctant to put the matter to a vote, this Prime Minister who preaches to us about respecting democratic votes. The government achieved 202 votes. Her opponents got 432.

The majority by which Theresa May lost was greater than the total number of MPs who backed her. 118 Conservative MPs voted against their own government. It was one of the greatest defeats for a government in the history of the British Parliament.

If Theresa May had had her way this deal would have been forced upon the UK without any meaningful say from that House of Commons whose sovereignty Brexit was supposed to…

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Scenting blood

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via Scenting blood

Scenting blood

Wee Ginger Dug

The Scottish media pack has got itself a bone, and it’s going to chew it. And chew it. Lost amonst the vast tundra-like acreage of the Scottish media’s coverage of Alex Salmond, there was an article this week entitled Alex Salmond Is Looking For Blood. And I thought to myself, clearly, he’s not the only one. You could say the same about the vast majority of the Scottish media. Today there was yet another column, this time entitled It’s Not Going To End Well. And indeed it’s not, although I suspect that it’s not Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon who need to be worried in the longer term.

Despite the MeToo movement, despite what seemed to have been a new consensus that allegations of sexual harrassment should be taken seriously and treated with sensitivity, that the feelings and voices of the alleged victims should be central to the…

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The Bloody Language Of Brexit

AN SIONNACH FIONN

Some interesting thoughts from the newspaper columnist Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times on the radical Brexit movement in the United Kingdom and the political turbulence its rise has caused in London:

The British expect revolutions to be bloodless; the Irish don’t. But as with so much else, Brexit plays strange games with these perceptions. Objectively, by far the biggest danger of violence resulting from this half-cocked revolution is in Ireland. Thus, for example, a thousand English and Scottish police officers are currently being given special training to prepare them to be sent to Northern Ireland to keep order in the event of a no-deal Brexit. But in the rhetoric of the Brexiteers, this reality is reversed: the threat of political violence in Ireland is non-existent and anyone alluding to it is scaremongering. But they themselves are free to threaten political violence in England if Brexit is stopped. History is…

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